The flash of red beacons lighted her way to the hanger bay as Mara careened around a sharp corner into another white hallway. All identical corridors didn't help as the blonde was still learning her way around the unfamiliar cruiser, but the hollers and whoops of pilots did. Her feet sped faster as a barrage of orange flight suits came into her view.

"Let's mount up people, don't make the Commander wait!" Jessika Pava's voice could be heard over the blare of a hundred alarms as Estoni finally began to gain on the group. She barely dodged past a few medics in her last sprint to catch them. She only allowed herself a single pause once she reached the bay. She was all heartbeat with cheeks flushed, pulse racing, chest heaving. The urgency of Leia's command had sent her running and it was only when her mind caught up with her feet did she realize the true gravity of the situation; the resistance was going into a battle where they were hilariously outmatched.

Poe, you better know what you're doing.

"Get in your fighters!" Was a command bellowed out by one of the squadron leaders over the commotion. All starfighters were being prepped and readied as mechanics disengaged their fueling pumps from X-wing engines and pilots swarmed to their posts. The air was electric with tension and Mara couldn't shake her adrenaline. Her head spun around as her eyes searched for her assigned ship among a dozen others like it.

A sudden, hard pat to her shoulder knocked her forward with a harsh momentum. Captain Tallie, a rather mousy but forceful ranking officer, pushed her farther into the hanger, "C'mon Estoni, Red squadron's this way."

With a shove in the right direction, the blonde locked eyes on her X-wing. The worn-down but trusty machine had just undergone maintenance on two of its laser cannons. That appeared to still be a noteworthy problem as she spied a Torgruta mechanic still fussing with the left bottom flashback suppressor.

"Nomen!" Mara hastily yelled to her roommate between breaths, "You've got 'er up and running?!"

A flash of blue-striped head tails whipped behind the woman's shoulder as Nomen turned to answer, "A turn of a few bolts and you're ready to go. Why aren't you wearing this?"

An oil-stained orange jumpsuit soared towards her and Mara readily caught it with one hand and awkwardly tried to work her coat off with the other. She threw the leather jacket to her exasperatedly, "I have been on this cruiser for all of five minutes-"

"Yeah, yeah, you're behind schedule. So is everyone else." The mechanic tied the jacket around her waist while the blonde struggled to pull the flight suit over one leg. Another fast-paced moment went by and the other leg was in. She hastily pulled up the zipper while the other explained, "Make sure to prime your weapons before leaving the hanger so the last cannon can reengage. I took it offline to do repairs so it'll need a moment for the system to sync up."

"Standard operations for fighters, I gotcha." She reached for one of the ladder's rungs that led to the cockpit and hoisted herself up. An unfamiliar, shrill beep sounded from the other side of the canopy and Estoni peered through the open canopy's window. A boxy astromech chattered a greeting to it's new pilot, who in turn found a moment to smile back to the droid. Mara hopped into the seat and hollered back down to the mechanic, "Anything else?"

Nomen appeared in her view again after having climbed the ladder to hand her the white uniform vest that conveniently had life support attached to it. She commented as the blonde strapped it on,  "Look, just take care of this thing, alright? We don't have too many spares lying around."

Mara's focus went to the buckling herself into the seat, but managed another deep breath before playfully answering, "You'd have to get real lucky if you want another mess to fix."

The words must have sounded believable along with the fleeting confidence Mara desperately wished would stay with her. Her roommate rolled her eyes at the cocky tone she had heard a dozen pilots use before, "I hope you fly as high as you talk."

Me too.

She hadn't been in a firefight in years. The muscles of her shoulders had begun to coil into taut knots and her thoughts plunged back into the acute, sensory memories of a time so similar. Only then she wore the enemy's colors (or lack thereof, whatever you considered black to be) and effectively led her squadron to certain doom that sent her spiraling. Apprehension had begun to bloom in her gut and she was busily trying to convince herself it was anticipation.

Nomen watched the woman with something akin to curiosity in her wide blue eyes. Mara finally looked back up at her and was slightly startled when the Togruta extended an open hand. She recognized this as some gesture of comradery and grabbed it eagerly. Nomen squeezed hard, scrunching her nose in a way that conveyed a type of reassurance. Mara didn't know if they were considered friends, but this exchange was certainly something friendly. A send-off before battle between allies.

Her mind wandered to the handshakes her men had created to hype each other up before an aerial raid. She remembered the occasional laugh she'd share with them before climbing into her TIE fighter. Her superiors in the First Order never liked the sociability of her team displayed before missions.

She needed to forget that right now. She just hoped Nomen couldn't feel her hands shaking.

In no time, Nomen had jumped off the ladder and began to disengage it from the fighter. Mara attempted to swallow back any doubts that had jumped to the front of her thought process. She had done so much to get inside this cockpit, to strap herself back into the machine that felt so much like another part of her being. She couldn't squander this opportunity.

The canopy closed around her once she fitted her helmet on. Orders were voiced through her headset while she flipped the according switches to bring the starfighter to life. She primed her weapons as instructed and waited for her commanding officer to ask for her call sign.

"All fighter squadrons, report in." Captain Tallie's voice came over the channel, "And don't hold your breath, let's get moving."

Responses poured into the comms and Mara chimed in when given the opportunity, "Red seven, standing by."

Sweat had already formed along her brow when the engines came online. Ships were already taking off of the tarmac and joining an amalgamated formation right outside. She engaged her engines, the initial momentum forward settling her back in her seat. The sensation sent her stomach leaping and an earnest, anxious grin turned up the corner of her lips.

The chirp of the assigned astromech behind her was translated on the screen to her left. It briefly introduced itself, I'm R-4.

The blonde bit the inside of her cheek and did what she did best when faced with life-threatening situations: started to talk about absolutely nothing, "Hey R-4, nice to meet you. Kind of feel like I'm cheating on my droid- well, sort of my droid, sorta not- but we could be good friends. I just gotta count on you to keep this thing intact long enough for me to do my job."

Her pulse pounded and threatened to jump right out of her blood as she launched out into open space. She navigated the fighter to join the rest of the fleet and found her assigned bomber; Tico and Nyx's.

I've done the drills. I'm a great pilot. There's nothing to worry about.

"Let's give them hell, buddy."

I so got this.

~~~~~

I SO DO NOT GOT THIS

Mara was in the middle of the firefight and it was hell. Every which way she looked there was both enemy and friendly fire. Someone was straining out a cry for help in her ear before it abruptly cut out. Her sight picture was flooded with the images of Resistance bombers being consumed by flames after being pelted by blasts. A TIE rushed in and out of her vision doggedly followed by an A-wing.

She couldn't breathe, she couldn't think- she instinctively dodged past the shrapnel of a destroyed ship and dove down once she could comprehend a TIE attempting to get a target lock on the bomber. It's a hard right and her body was thrown into the turn and her helmet harshly hit against one of the metal bars. A brash pain engulfed the crown of her forehead and she fired without looking at her monitor and breathing was getting harder. The TIE lost a wing in the first flurry of shots and another barrage of blasts finished the job.

"Pull up!"

"I can't, I'm going down-"

"Hold formation!"

The rushed communication of doomed pilots varied heavily every second with disjointed calls for aid being curtly disconnected. The screech of static would sound for a moment until another yelled out a command. The woman couldn't hear herself think.

1

You're really freaking out-

Mara couldn't rely on the crutch of her counting method before a burst of debris was blown out in front of her and she had to bank left. Something impacted her fighter; hard. The whole craft violently shuddered upon collision and was sent spinning off course. The stars became a thousand rolling lines wrapping themselves together and the chaos of flames blur into a continuous whirl. Her heart was in her chest, her stomach, her throat and back down into the pit of her gut as Mara gritted her teeth and wretched the joystick up. The nose of the ship found its course and rocketed back up in one lurch of speed.

Her head still wasn't clear- it wasn't right at all and there were fewer bombers ahead than thirty seconds before. Violent red lit up the control panel and three indicators on the monitor flashed in a desperate attempt to steal her attention because something was wrong with a circuit breaker. A flash suppressor. One of her weapons was down.

"R-4!" The cry was choked out of a tight throat. The call for repairs went unanswered. The astromech system was completely offline. The droid had been hit. A cannon was malfunctioning. The last time she only had single working cannon, one shot blew her out of the sky. Her brother blew her out of the sky.

"Red seven!"

A pilot's brain was always working on overdrive and Mara's must've snapped a loose wire; Is it Ratakka or D'Qar beside them? No, focus! Another Resistance craft was slaughtered by a volley of enemy fire and a sudden shot of panic raced up her spine. Poe's shouts of urgency relay the information that their meager fleet is down to one bomber. Snap Wexley called out again through the mayhem, "Estoni, two on your tail!"

Mara's erratic breathing didn't slow down in the slightest but she could comprehend the two TIE fighters making a fast approach from the rear, "I see them. Stay with Tico."

Her fighter swung back up from the underside of the colossal Dreadnought to nearly skim its exterior to stay out of the pair's firing range. Though still too much distance between them for a direct hit, the opponents started to rain fire in her direction as she swerved around one of the disabled cannons littering the destroyer's surface. Awoken, anguished memories still occupied most of the environment in her mind, but Mara found a goal to keep her attention on the present situation.

Get these guys away from the bomber.

That priority was not putting her in a great spot since she was currently charging towards a swarm of freshly deployed ships and had two trained on her that she wouldn't be able to outrun. The main advantage TIEs had over most Resistance vessels was their agility and speed; neither was in the blonde's favor as she dipped low with green lasers launching overhead.

Time was running out and it felt like her oxygen was too. A flurry of bad ideas ran into her messy thoughts all at once. Solution, solution- she needed one quick or her guts were gonna be splattered all over the blown pieces of her fighter.

Yet oh, even in the precursor of a full-on breakdown did Mara know how to take a risk. It was a gutsy maneuver in a nimble TIE fighter that can out-bank but in an X-wing? One second wrong and you've lost half of your aircraft.

Her hand wrenched the joystick to the side and barreled right into a roll. The TIE's closed in fast and the entirety of a small fleet was soaring to close the gap. All Mara could let out was a curse, "Oh, kriff it."

She cut the engines.

All the momentum that sent the ship rocketing forward halted and the X-wing's structure gave a unanimous shriek. The only thought she can muster is G-force is one hard bitch as her whole body was thrown into the control stick. The TIEs were a blur while they screamed past on both sides, narrowly missing clipping off her fighter's extended wings altogether. The pair roared right past their target and into her firing range.

No time to think about the pain of the joystick lodged in her stomach. A panic burst in Mara like a flash in the pan once her hand pressed down and sent the torpedoes off. The missiles ran their course towards the enemy vessels and didn't miss. The result was a grandiose eruption that took both TIEs out, serving as a large obstacle for the dozen others hurtling towards the fleet. It bought the woman time to bail out.

The thrusters snapped back on two seconds too late and she gripped the siding of the cockpit in vain to stabilize. The bow of the ship swung around, the maneuver conjuring bile to leech to the front of her throat. A desperate yelp squeezed out between her lips and she punched the fuel once the boosters fully came back online, "C'mon, c'mon, get out of hereeee."

The welcome pressure of acceleration propelled through every atom of her and jolted the lone X-wing back to the main battle just as another explosion of flames engulfed the carrier's surface. Something was making it hard to see and Mara couldn't decide if it was sweat or blood stinging her eyes. That distraction didn't obstruct the large fireball that glowed like a meteor engulfing the Dreadnought's turbo blaster battery.

They did it. Mission over. Now it was trying not to end up as scrap metal before she reached the docking bay.

There was also the blazing trail of wreckage heading straight for her in the wake of the bombs. No time to think of how many other times she'd seen destruction like this or how the iron tang in her mouth was from biting down too hard on her tongue. The fighter veered as close as it could to the growing flames in hopes the TIEs behind wouldn't be stupid enough to follow.

A blue streaked X-wing banked suddenly banked into view, entrapped in a desperate race against an enemy fighter that had yet to give up. Jessika Pava had a stubborn one sticking with her. With what weapons she had left, Mara fired for the connecting pylons that held the TIE together. Another big boom. One more down, however many left behind.

The blonde thought she heard Pava thank her over the comms while the last two ships made a mad dash to catch up with the formation Poe was leading. Now it was Mara's head that went into a dizzying tailspin. With her focus finally off the intensity of her surroundings, the foundation of half-hearted stoic expression fled.

In a sudden movement, she flipped up her visor and pulled back the attached commlink. The static of dead lines stilled reverberated in her left ear, the absence of chatter weighing heavier than the abundance of it. While her insides had deicide to twist in on themselves, she finally acknowledged the three tear tracks that had paved their way down her cheeks. A fourth fell and a whisp of a word fell through clenched teeth, "No, no."

Her fighter docked and the carrier made a hasty jump to lightspeed. The fight was behind them.

Mara knew she did not feel like this after missions. Not the bad ones, not the good ones, not the particularly crappy ones where the squadron came back a ship short. And looking out to the rest of the fleet through the canopy window, a whole lot more than just a few hadn't made it back to the Raddus.

The engine's purr powered off at the flip of a switch and Mara sat at the heart of a dead machine. Everything was wrong; the anxiety that buzzed electrically under her muscles wasn't adrenaline and the bile working it's way too burn the back of her mouth wasn't welcome. She drew in a strangled breath and tipped back her head to stare at the looming ceiling that would've felt confining after experiencing the ultimate freedom. Why was her head pounding? Why was it like the sensation of Ren peeling back her brain?

The sudden knock on the window was unexpected and nearly made the woman jump out of her skin. Mara peered down to see an exasperated Nomen already mouthing something back up at her and vividly gesturing to the back of the fighter. The pilot scooped her helmet off and in the name action wiped her face with the palm of her hand, dearly hoping that her roommate hadn't seen the red rimming around her eyes. The canopy popped open, the noise of a bustling hanging spilling into the cockpit along with high-pitched grievances of one dramatic mechanic.

"And what happened to not bringing back a mess?" From what Mara could now clearly hear, she had caught Nomen mid-rant as she was now pointing to a large gash cut into the side of a wing, "And what is this?"

The blonde began to descend down a ladder, not immediately facing the rest of the docking bay in order to compose herself, "Most of it's um-it's circuiting. Flashback suppressors gave me more trouble. The astromech couldn't fix it in the field."

When Mara finally did turn to look at the damage on her fighter, her gaze flew to the injured droid seated right behind the cockpit. Frayed wiring stemmed haphazardly from what was left of R-4's boxy head and it's holoprojector eye was nowhere to be seen. The sight was disheartening, "Is he salvageable?"

"Little thing took a bad hit. Not laser cannons though, so it didn't take the guy out in one fell swoop." Nomen quickly commandeered the ladder and slid it down to the droid's position, hopping up onto the second rung and taking a closer inspection, "Your whole right side is scratched up."

"Sharpnel." Her hand slid back to the nape of her neck to the back of her sweat-soaked hair and felt a bump of bruised flesh on the side of her temple. Her eyes skimmed over the extent of the red-striped X-wing's acquired scars, "Mostly needs a new paint job."

The Togruta had wrapped her gloved hands around the disconnected circuits and sharp, disfigured metal of what once was R-4, "He's missing a primary IMU unit, but not much else of his central processing systems. All this guy needs is for us to find a new...head. Shouldn't be too much trouble."

Nomen's head tails swung back when she took another look at the supposedly talented, fresh recruit whose attention had been turned on the rest of the ships in the hanger. The precarious sense of urgency still held onto the Resistance in the aftermath of the fight with banged-up silver transports frantically unloading whatever salvaged parts they had grabbed before the evacuation. The large space was still full to the brim soldiers going about on assigned tasks, but there sure were a lot less light fighters.

The mechanic let some of her irritation slip by while dropping a few severed wires, offering something that may have been an attempt at sympathizing, "The glory of war on the run. At least you guys took out a Dreadnought."

"Yeah." Mara half-heartedly agreed, still searching the crowd for a familiar face. When she didn't find one, her focus went to the black X-wing in the middle of it all.

When Poe jumped out of his ship, BB-8 was already clamoring a few beeps to greet his friend a few strides away, "Woah, pal, where you going?"

The little spherical droid had rolled to meet her and begun detailing his newest escapade to Mara, who put in an effort to seem just as enthusiastic by breaking out a large smile, "Bud, slow down, my Binary is still rusty at best."

"He saved my weapons array," Dameron pulled off his gloves, throwing them back up into the pilot's seat before joining the pair, "And I'm sure that's all he'll be going on about for the next week."

What would you do without me?

Poe grinned down at the beaming astromech, patting the side of his frame, "Oh, I'm aware I'd be long gone by now."

Mara was somewhat surprised he wasn't at the moment. Look, she loved crazy ideas as much as the next girl, but the tension in her chest had yet to alleviate and the result was a chiding remark, "After that stunt you pulled, I'm surprised you're not."

"What, taking out all the guns first?" He acted completely blameless, motioning in the general direction of the destroyed cruiser lightyears behind them and then back to her, "Or the whole thing before that?"

The 'thing' being a reference to calling out her brother on being pasty and having a cooler sibling. The mention of that exchange briefly tabled most of her concerns and Mara might actually have cracked a smile, "Okay, that I liked. As a tactician, terrible plan for distraction. All true though, you really hit all the marks on pissing him off. I'm always a big fan of that."

Dameron might have managed chuckle if BB-8 hadn't begun to frantically chirp out a slew of beeps in order to get both of their attention. It worked after a few more spouts of gibberish.

"Finn?" Poe's confusion was evident in his tone, "Naked?"

"Leaking bag? Wet?" Mara narrowed her eyes at the droid in perplexity.

"Did you fry a chip?'

Not satisfied by their reactions, BB swiveled  his head back towards the entrance of the bay doors. The sight staring back at them was indeed what appeared to Finn leaking, wet, and partially naked.

Do I hallucinate my comatose friends after bad flights, she thought to herself, or is this real?

Another second swept by and he was still standing there in a bacta suit with tubes attached, spouting out the clear liquid in the middle of a white hallway. Hope had kicked her feet into a run before she knew she was moving, calling out across the room, "Finn!"

Bewilderedly, the man recognized her. His words came languidly, "Mara?"

She skidded to a stop just before the hallway, eyes wide in disbelief at the odd scene, "You're walking, you're talking! You're out of the med wing!"

Nothing of what Finn expressed led her to believe that he was clearly understanding the situation around him, but his voice raised slightly in response to her and his last memories before his spine was severed, "Mara! You're alive!"

With no forethought to the bacta spilling out of the ripped flexpoly, she wrapped her arms around his punctured medical suit and he eagerly did the same, still unaware of the entire circumstance he had stumbled into.

Poe had caught up in no time as the two pulled back and was beside him in a moment, "Finn! Oh my god, you must have a thousand questions."

One came to his mind after observing his surroundings and what it lacked. His first inquiry was directed at Mara in an almost pleading manner. He remembered the moments before engaging an unmasked monster who cut down his own father so suddenly. He remembered his friends' bodies laying in the snow of Starkiller. Now only one of them was present.

"Where's Rey?"

hello friends, it is i, the elusive author. who started writing again. you know, like how authors are supposed to do.

this is rouGH and its because it has been a longgg while since i've picked this up. i've been working my ass off at school, actual work, and in hardcore procrastinating on this story. but as star wars season comes and goes, you lovelies have reawakened my love for mara with the lovely attention you've been giving this series. there would be no story without you and i'm incredibly grateful for youuuuuuu guys.

2020 is about to be the year of mar hitting things with sticks and emotionally compromising herself at every turn. buckle up friends!